Milwaukee Bucks Doc Rivers Blasts Top ESPN Insider Over ‘Inaccurate’ Report About Locker Room Dysfunction

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Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers on Friday called out ESPN insider Shams Charania for what he considered to be “inaccurate” reporting on his team.

Rivers’ frustration stemmed from an article published Tuesday on ESPN’s website. The article detailed the supposed turmoil that led to a disappointing season for the Bucks, who were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs in late March.

Multiple sources told Charania that the team had an intense meeting following a loss to the Chicago Bulls weeks earlier. The report continued:

The morning after the Bucks had turned a double-digit lead into a blowout road loss in Chicago on March 1, Rivers called for a team meeting. If the Bucks were to rally into a play-in spot, this week was the most critical. The Bucks next faced a short-handed Boston Celtics team in Milwaukee on a back-to-back set March 2 before a pivotal contest against the Hawks.

Rivers, who won an NBA title as coach of the Celtics in 2008 and will be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame later this year, started the meeting by imploring his players to look up his résumé, six people in the room told ESPN.

During a Friday appearance on the FanDuel TV show Run It Back, Rivers insisted the meeting was mischaracterized. The coach then took it a step further when he stated his preference for former ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski. The insiders had something of an unspoken rivalry when they were both active.

“Shams wrote an article that was so inaccurate that I don’t have enough time to go into,” Rivers said. “He talked about a locker room thing, and I was laughing. Like, yeah, we had a tough locker room day. We lost to the Chicago Bulls with a 20-point lead. I showed clips the next day of guys who were screwing up. That’s what happens in the locker room, you know. The first thing I thought: Where’s Woj? I miss Woj so much.”

Rivers also suggested that Charania had another motive for the report. According to Rivers, Charania took such offense to a joke he made that he called the Bucks and asked them to remove it from their social media accounts. Rivers then claimed he was warned that Charania was working on a “revenge article.”

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